


the sun in retreat.

by katarama



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Divorce, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Coital Cuddling, Season 1 Outtake, after sex - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 03:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12224562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Lydia is sixteen years old.  It’s 1:00 AM, and she’s in Jackson’s bed.In another story, someone might care.





	the sun in retreat.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rjosettes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjosettes/gifts).



 

Lydia is sixteen years old.  It’s 1:00 AM, and she’s in Jackson’s bed.  In another story, someone might care; someone might call after her, text her wondering where she is or why she never came home from school or why she ignored the 11:30 curfew her mother supposedly set two years ago.

Lydia’s parents are fighting again.  Her mother’s probably halfway through a bottle of chardonnay.  No one cares that she isn’t where she’s supposed to be.  She’s naked, her dress on a hanger in Jackson’s closet and her bra on the floor next to her.  

There’s a used condom in the wastebasket, and no one is outraged about it, because no one really gives a shit.  

She talks to herself in the dark, tells herself that it’s better this way.  Easier.  There’s no slipping in and out late at night, once her mother’s dropped off, or lying about going to spend the night at the houses of friends she doesn’t have.  There’s no angry shouting matches or conversations about responsibility or about growing up too fast.  It’s her life and her business, and it would be absurd for her parents to try to impose any order now. 

Jackson’s mother gave him a serious, awkward talk about using protection.  Lydia’s parents probably still haven’t even noticed that Lydia is on birth control.  Even if Lydia had to get them to sign for them, she doesn’t think they’d realize - her dad hasn’t paid attention to a single form he’s signed for her in years.  

No one cared before, and no one cares now.

The bed creaks.  Lydia turns her gaze from the ceiling to the person next to her.  His lips are still puffy and red from kissing her; he couldn’t keep his hands off of her at the post-game party, and the taste of whiskey in his mouth was the only thing that kept them from snagging a room and hooking up there.

His eyes are open, framed from below with dark bags. 

“You aren’t sleeping,” he says.  A statement.  A fact.  It’s still full of more softness and concern than Lydia’s had directed her way in days.  “Is everything okay?”

Lydia doesn’t answer, at first.  She’s too naked, literally and emotionally.  Her face is bare and her body’s hidden only by Jackson’s soft sheets.  None of it hides the weariness, the bone-dead tiredness that she’s feeling, from anyone, let alone Jackson.  

The only way to hide anything at all from Jackson is not to say anything.  He’s known her too well for too long, has heard her emotions in her voice quivering over the phone late at night, before the divorce was a daily reality.  Back when it was new and terrifying and hurtful.

“You don’t have to be okay,” Jackson says quietly.  His arm slips around her under the covers, his skin firm and warm.  “I let you forget sometimes, but you don’t have to be okay around me.”

It isn’t really true, now more than ever.  They fight more than they ever did.  Lydia says things that are angry, mean.  Things that are meant to cut.  Things that are meant to make Jackson feel like less than he is.  Jackson says them right back, sometimes in response, and sometimes to preempt.  They’re both pretending things are okay.  They’ve always both been good at that around other people, but it’s never come so naturally around each other before.

But it’s what Lydia needed to hear.  And, short of her parents, it’s the person Lydia needed to hear it from.  Jackson says it like he means it, his face soft and earnest from tiredness, his body close.  Surrounding her, pulling her in in away that isn’t designed for anything but comfort.

Lydia’s vision blurs.  Her eyes are wet.  She takes a deep breath and just lets it come, lets the feeling of everything going wrong bleed out into blotchy cheeks and ugly, sniffly noises.

She buries her face in the crook of Jackson’s neck, and Jackson rubs her back.  He doesn’t force her to talk.  She almost wishes he would, though it’s best that he doesn’t.  He’s the only source of comfort in her entire life right now, and sometimes she needs time like this.  Time when she doesn’t have to have the right words to say for anything.  Time when she can be naked and free of makeup and terrified and have someone there for her, accepting the pieces of her she sees as weak.

“We don’t ever have to be okay around each other,” Jackson tells her again.  Lydia thinks it’s the closest he’s come to an  _ I love you _ .  For Jackson, it’s the ultimate form of trust.  It’s also kind of ironic, from someone who spends so much of his time sloppy drunk at parties, who doesn’t seem to realize that no one sees him as perfectly composed to begin with.  Or maybe he does realize, and it’s why he spent the entire week until tonight practicing on the lacrosse field until the light faded, only to go home to study until his body couldn’t run anymore.

No one notices it with him, either.  No one but Lydia.  Because she knows that she makes things worse for him, the same way he makes things worse from her.  But at the end of the day, they’re cut from the same cloth, and if they weren’t doing this to each other, they’d only be doing it to themselves.

“I love you,” Lydia says. There’s a hiccup in her muffled voice.  In the morning, she’ll be embarrassed about it; about all of this, the hurt and the tears and the way she’s clinging to Jackson like he’s a lifeline.  In the morning, she’ll relatch her bra and slide back into her dress and reapply her makeup like it will make none of this real.

Jackson holds her tight and kisses the top of her head, and in spite of everything, Lydia knows that she was wrong earlier.  

Her parents may not care, but someone does.  Neither of them is sure how to show it in the light of day, but Lydia clings to it.

Right now, it’s all she has.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com).


End file.
